Ann Arbor design studio for workshops and street work in a converted food truck

ANN ARBOR – What do you do when an old food truck lands in your hands?

This is the question Lisa Sauve of Synecdoche Design Studio asked herself when her company recently bought the old Ricewood truck.

Sauve said she asked Frank Fejeran, the owner of the popular BBQ area, about the truck after it was well established in his York brick factory.

“I said, ‘Frank, can I have your truck?’” Sauve recalled. “And he said, ‘I wouldn’t trust anyone else to do something great (with).’ He brought the truck to our studio. I think he understood the value it had to Ricewood. It was an easy way for him to continue paying without much effort. “

And the prepayment is something Sauve says Synecdoche plans to continue with their new mobile studio they called TruckTruck.

Screenshot from the video for Synecdoche’s TruckTruck campaign. (Synecdoche design studio)

The company is currently raising funds through Kickstarter to fix the truck. The campaign has raised $ 2,433 of its $ 12,000 goal by Thursday afternoon and ends on October 28th.

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Synecdoche plans to spend the winter repairing the truck, making it safe, and adding furniture, warehouses, points of sale and more to the interior. According to Sauve, the work should be completed by spring 2022, with the aim of officially launching TruckTruck in May.

Synecdoche will use the finished truck to host manufacturer workshops across town and also plans to rent it out to companies or organizations that want to host pop-ups.

“What if someone wants to open a record store?” Sauve said. “The first thing they do is TruckTruck, build their audience, and put on DJ band sessions in the library parking lot or something. It’s about trying different ways for people to test different markets, find their community and start their new ideas. “

Synecdoche is currently planning to lease TruckTruck for $ 5,000 for three months. Prices can be flexible depending on the customer and the time the truck is needed, Sauve said.

“If it’s a nonprofit trying to run a workshop, we’ll be staggering the other way,” she said.

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Sauve said they plan to eventually donate TruckTruck to Synecdoche’s nonprofit arm, which is currently under development. The aim is to turn this into a “community bridge” that helps emerging companies understand their work before exploring stationary options.

The design firm partnered with local marketing firm DO: BETTER and Design Core Detroit on the project, which it hopes will pique the curiosity that comes across.

“Wherever you see TruckTruck, you know something exciting is about to happen there,” Sauve said. “I hope that moments like this can inspire our community even more.”

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